Drink the Poison Lightly
by Acciodoublestuffed
Summary: I expect I'll never see you again-she never came back that day . Belle is fatalistic and Mr. Gold can't help but what as she self-destructs. R/B


Disclaimer: I don't own anything

Summary: Drink the Poison Lightly. (_I expect I'll never see you again—she never came back that day_) Belle is fatalistic and Mr. Gold can't help but stand by and watch.

For over at Tumblr. Check it out… if you dare.

**Written to:  
><strong>Brand New – Play Crack the Sky  
>Sia - Lullaby<br>Death Cab for Cutie – Cath…  
>Mumford and Sons – The Enemy<br>The Gaslight Anthem – the Queen of Lower Chelsea and Great Expectations

**Title taken from:  
><strong>3OH!3 – I'm Not the One

* * *

><p>"<em>I'll tell you what, I'll make you a deal: go to town and fetch me some straw. When you return I'll share my tale," his steepled fingers speak of an openness she knows is not there.<em>

"_But, town? You trust me to come back?" What is he playing at, she wonders._

"_Oh no, I expect I'll never see you again."_

_He doesn't._

* * *

><p>Belle never came back that day. As she flees his dark castle, she takes very little with her—she doesn't want to be weighed down, after all. She takes only an empty basket and, when his head is turned, a single rose, that he'd offered as a gift and a quip.<p>

Belle wasn't one to miss traces of magic, nor his malicious, _possessive_ grin. They'd magicians at her father's court; they can't fight ogres, but they've skill enough for this _last _bit of chicanery.

On her way a carriage makes to pass. It's black and expected. As it stops, Belle pastes on her most innocent of eyes.

"Did my carriage splash you?" the voice is motherly, but as Belle well knows, all the mothers died long ago.

_I know who—and what—you are, you horrid, old hag. You're not the first courtier I've met, mistress, nor the last, so don't think you're fooling anyone with your smiles and your tales and your mock concern. I've played this game before. I've heard him talking to you in the night. I know what you do, and I will not be a piece in you or anyone else's game anymore (not even _his_)._

_No one decides my fate but me. _

"Oh no I'm fine." She smiles. The expression is reflected back, and Belle thinks, _one may smile and smile and be a killer_. She walks with the witch plays her part of the innocent child-princess. Belle smells the blood and poison on the queen's cloak that not even the strongest of perfumes could overpower.

"So if I'm right," (_you're not, but so _very_ close_). "You love your employer, but you're leaving him."

"I might love him, I mean I could except…"

Except that Belle realizes that love is not lasting. It fades, like the rose she carries. Nor likely, and all that can be hoped for is to just get by in this life, with as few scrapes as can be managed, while keeping hold of your freedom.

Freedom to make your own choices and freedom to do and die all of ones own accord.

Belle knew a woman who killed herself once—died of a broken heart, that one. Belle knew that love was a lost child's dream. All she could do was make choices she could live to bear, but only _just._

"Sounds like a curse to me." _More than you know_ (she was well acquainted with curses. Her mother had died of the most painful of them all).

_Good luck, my dear_, the companionable woman-of-the-road said. _Thank you—thank you so much, _the love-struck girl replied.

Belle's face and façade drop as the carriage entourage moves on, the bags beneath her eyes falling just a little deeper than before. After it's out of sight, she takes to the forest for the rest of the journey back home.

* * *

><p>"<em>And what about your betrothed?" <em>

"_It was an arranged marriage. Honestly, I never really cared much for Gaston. To me, love is… love is layered. Love is a mystery to be uncovered. I could never truly give my heart to someone as superficial as he." _

* * *

><p>She marries Gaston before the Summer Solstice.<p>

She does not love Gaston, but they have stayed up late many nights in the war room, comparing notes and battle strategies (he always wants to plunge in, head on, while she is eternally on the defensive, though much to her own dismay and disgust). They've reached some sort of a partnership, after she brought him back to court and life.

Belle thinks that it's for the best. They work well together, and hoping for more is foolhardy and a path her mother once walked_—the way of no return_.

The daughter has no interest in that path; she's certainly looked down it enough to know.

The wedding is small, what with the ongoing ogre wars. Her dress is without adornment, though the pristine white fabric is of expensive stock. She wears only a small crown in hair (silver, not gold), and when she grips the man's hands before her, he thinks it's in anticipation. He can't see that it's because she's trying not to run away (_guess we're more alike than I'd imagined_).

What else could she do?

To her, love was layered, but so many of those layers were filled to the brim with pain and heartbreak. Her parents had loved, and look how that had ended: layer after layer, building a tower and an ending that's flitted through her mind and made her hands itch to _move _on winter nights when all the courts down feasting and dancing, when Gaston moves to kiss her in dark corridors or when she can't quiet the voices in her mind with any and all of her damn books.

With a dead heart and a knowledge of the reality of life and destiny (there is none; it's all chance and hers ended so very long ago) what else was there for her to do except to fulfill expectations? What do the disillusioned do when their hearts finally die?

She kisses his insistent mouth but there is no gold in it, no promises of forever (_they'd already just done that with their words; what 's the use of doing it again?_).

Those with dead and dying hearts, she supposes, accept a life they can understand, because those with dead and dying hearts are cowards—afraid to live and afraid to love in a world where they know it will just end in tragedy.

She marries Gaston. Then, months later, the world ends, of course.

* * *

><p>"<em>Where are we going?" <em>

"_Somewhere horrible."_

* * *

><p>A new world, but the story changes little. A dead mother, the same as before, killed by love. Her father drinks and spends money they don't have. Isabelle French has to grow up faster than most girls—<em>but she learns quickly; it's not the first time she's played this game. <em>

(When she sneaks into the alcohol cabinet at fourteen with Ruby she wonders with a mind that's lived for years upon years, where this path will end and if it can be any but an unhappy one).

Everything she does speaks of déjà vu; everything she does is followed by disaster.

She gets engaged to her high school sweetheart, later than most girls, but then she has long danced around this topic. What's love and marriage to a girl who only dreams of taillights and dark, wet pavement speeding past(_and eyes the same color_)?

It's the night of the town fair, and Gavin asks her in front of everyone (she hates public spectacle—perhaps that's why he's done it) and strangely enough she hears herself saying yes.

Because that's what you do in this town, grow and marry and live a life with smiles and Saturday farmer's markets and at night when your husband's sound asleep and snoring, that's when you scream into living room pillows—_she's seen it all before_.

Suddenly, of course, they are surrounded by people; congratulations flooding over her (_she wishes she could part the sea and walk through alone, and vaguely remembers how once she'd crossed a room like an ocean and people had fled her path, but had she really walked out alone?)._

Then of course, her father's creditor is standing before her.

He's dressed in his usual garb, though it's sweltering, with a blanket of humidity covering their revelry tonight. He stares at her, but then he turns, shaking hands with her too-tall forever-boyfriend—fiancé._ Fiancé._ "Congratulations, you're a lucky man."

His eyes lift to hers, as he says the word "man." Then, suddenly he's embracing her (_surely she's not the only one who is shocked by this—Mr. Gold making a display of gregarious affection?)_ and she finds herself returning the action. Before she can pull back, he's kissed her cheek and whispered in her ear, "You're lucky, dearie, you've someone who loves you."

She whispers a quiet thank you, _if only you knew_, as she feels Gavin's hand slip down her back pocket—she hates when he does that. "Thank you, Mr. Gold," her _fiancé _says, the words sounding like a dismissal.

_Oh, if only you knew_.

The man smiles—though, why does she think it strained? Then disappears into the mass. Just like that, there and then not.

Isabelle tries to think back to the first time they met, and somehow can't place her finger on the very moment. They've always just _been._ Passing on Main Street or at the door to the diner. She's never been to his shop, but she instantly has a deep desire to go see what's inside.

That night, when she cries in a back alley (_no you stay, I'll be fine, it's just all this fair food not sitting right. No, I can walk myself back. I'm not made of china, you know_)she thinks she hears an uneven gait, but when she looks up there's no one to be found. Good. No one can know.

They'd think she was crazy. Lock her away. Who cries on the night they get engaged? (_She knew a woman once, who was crazy—killed herself, that one_. _She cried in alleyways too. The family never recovered). _

* * *

><p><em>I love you he'd whisper in the dark of his pickup truck, smelling of sports gear and stale cigarettes, as he pulls and tugs at her without rhyme or rhythm. She hears herself echo back the words, but there's no heart in it, not <em>her_ heart at least._ _She hasn't seen that in ages_.

_Her eyes are open and she can see that stupid crease in his forehead. She kisses him with her eyes open, always open._

* * *

><p>Of course, some wondered just why Mr. French was driving the night of the town fair.<p>

As usual he had had too much to drink, but that wasn't so different from every other night he went to the town bar. His daughter would pick him up eventually and that would be the end of it until next weekend. "Poor man," the town said, "who can expect more after that tragedy with his wife… Oh well, at least the daughter turned out _normal._"

Apparently, he'd stormed off to the bar after a fight with Mr. Gold over money again—he had mortgaged the house this time, but Isabelle didn't know that just yet.

The bar owner called the French house, but no one answered (_everyone was at the fair or in alleyways crying_), but Isabelle could never figure out just who exactly made the call to her father's soon to be son-in-law. The dutiful _boy _had left immediately, but not soon enough to beat Mr. French leaving in his flower truck (_Papa, I just don't think the business warrants a truck yet—You'll see, Isabelle, this will change everything_).

Then they crash and she is an orphan.

_Nothing can stop fate that's been working for much longer than her twenty-eight years merited._

* * *

><p>"<em>My family, my friends, they will all live?"<em>

"_You have my word."_

"_And you have mine."_

* * *

><p>This is when it starts. This is where it ends.<p>

After the funerals, she comes home and throws out all the casseroles the town mothers (_you know what they say about girls with dead mothers_) piled into her kitchen. She goes to bed and lies down, as the only picture atop her vanity sings dark lullabies.

The calls start a week later. She unplugs the phone.

* * *

><p>"Fiancé and father on the same night, pity."<p>

"The poor girl."

"What a hero. What a brave little thing."

They would all stop saying those and other words soon enough, when instead, Isabelle French stood as an example of bad parenting and reasons to buy better insurance, after running across her wrecked and painted face in the supermarket check-out line.

* * *

><p>He'd been there of course. To hear her screams—there'd been no pillows in which to stifle the sound, so they had all heard. The whole town heard her screams, but none heard them quite so clearly, or with the same satisfaction as he.<p>

He waits a week, to let the comatose wear off. Wouldn't sting as much otherwise.

He doesn't offer her a cleaning job, nor one in his shop, because this isn't the kind of tale they share. Instead, he lets her self-destruct, standing close by as she does so, to take in the pieces of the fallout he's due.

She's more than half way to desperate when he decides it's high time to go see that friend of hers with the sick grandmother and overdue payments on their diner and inn.

* * *

><p>Mr. Gold's lawyer tracks her down about a month after the fact. School's started and there are no children on the streets (<em>they must be off fighting in the wars<em>).

Mr. Gold doesn't come himself (_once a coward, always a coward_). Doesn't trust himself to follow through with all of this or to hide his glee at her expense.

By the time she sees the dreaded intermediary, Isabelle can't duck and hide quick enough. It's all taken a toll; she's slower now, and she'd been staring up, wondering just how tall the clock tower stood.

He takes her to his office and sits her down. She doesn't remember the walk. Hardly remembers her name. "Miss French, did your father share just how indebted he was?"

She doesn't answer. She doesn't have to.

"Miss French, are you hearing me? You're going to lose the house."

That rouses her, but only a little. "What can I do?"

The faceless lawyer shrugs—he's just another man whose glad it isn't his life or his daughter. "Pack."

* * *

><p>Ruby slips her the card that afternoon. She'd never have done it otherwise, if it wasn't for the overdue rent and Mr. Gold's hand around her wrist.<em> "You'll do it. Wouldn't want your grandmother's medication prescription not getting renewed, now would we?<em>"

It's the last time the two girls speak (_because the making of this call will put her across an invisible line, but one that's so very tangible in this too small town_), and finally Isabelle's all alone.

She feels like she's balancing on the edge of the roof and looking down. She feels like her mother; she feels free.

It's not the first time the idea has come to mind, she recalls, holding the card.

She calls the number for an interview that afternoon. The whole town knows the place, on the outskirts. It's a joke to young boys, a fear to mothers and a secret to husbands.

And to Isabelle, it's just a job.

She gets it, of course—she's pretty enough, but a little doe-eyed—just waitressing, but still in _this_ place, the line between tipped waitress and paid whore is getting grayer all the time.

She loses the house. Doesn't bother with taking much, the talking photo of her mother, a gold necklace, and blue dress that she bought ages and fits like a glove. She moves into a small apartment complete with a heater that she can't adjust and a mold problem. She wonders if she should have begged for help (_It's too late; it's just too late_), but somehow she doesn't regret her free-fall.

_No one decides my fate, but me_.

* * *

><p>She smiles as she pours drinks for men she recognizes, who won't meet her eyes, but easily enough take in her <em>very <em>short skirt. _One may smile and smile and be dead inside._

More than once she sees him there, always in the back, hidden by shadows. She always starts to go over and ask what he'll be having to drink, but something, a yell from a patron or the bartender, always pulls her away (_not for the first time_).

One night, once the town's forgot they'd ever pitied the girl, she covers an extra shift, so it's in the wee hours when she leaves. It's been months and this has become routine enough to dull the edges of the shame she feels whenever she leaves for the night.

Then she remembers she hitched a ride with another waitress, who finished up hours ago and now she's no way to get home, but her own two feet. She shrugs, running a hand through her teased and towering hair, and starts down the road.

"Wouldn't wander off that way, if I were you." There he stands. _I wondered when you'd finally come to me, _she thinks, but wonders from where the words stem.

He gestures with his expensive-looking cane, "That way leads out of town."

("_It's the outskirts." As teenagers they'd told ghost tales. "Those who leave town _never_ return," Ruby had said, by candlelight one sleepover lifetimes back)._

"Mr. Gold, what are you doing here?"

He smiles, in that way of his. _One may smile and smile and be a villain. _"Well, you see my dear, I own this place."

Isabelle scoffs. It made sense, of course.

"What?" he asks wryly.

"I shouldn't be surprised. You do own everything, after all."

He takes her in with one long look (_of longing, centuries in the making_) "No, dearie, not everything." She doesn't look away, and wonders what comes next, but he tells her easily enough. "Come on then, I'll drive you home," he says, his voice as inviting as any gentlemanly bow—but gentlemen don't make deals like he does, nor drive home waitresses half their age from strip clubs they own.

* * *

><p>"<em>I will go with you, forever." <em>

_The princess doesn't thank him when she makes her deal. They always seemed to thank him before signing away their lives. Strange, but it wasn't like she'd be any different._

"_Deal_."

* * *

><p>They drove into the heart of town in silence. He doesn't ask her the way; she can't say this surprises her. After he parks the car, he says, "I'll walk you in."<p>

Of course he will.

When they enter, she suddenly feels self-conscious. She's nothing to offer him, at least in terms of food or drink. The only food in her one-room apartment is a stale half-loaf of bread and a box of artificial sweetener. They stand in the room, he as if he owns the place and she feeling just how tenuous her ownership of anything actually is.

She asks the question that strikes up another round of déjà vu—_that just keeps happening to us. _"Why are you here?"

"Oh I think you know why."

* * *

><p>"<em>Why did you want me here?"<em>

"_Place was filthy."_

"_I think you were lonely."_

* * *

><p>Next time he brings by groceries, but the way he takes her reminds them both that this is no love story—it's one of lust and hate.<p>

* * *

><p>"<em>Is this about that girl I met on the road, hm?" The queen stirs her tea and taunts him, "What was her name? Margie? Verna?"<em>

"_Belle."_

"_Right. Then I suppose congratulations are in order."_

"_What?"_

"_You don't know? Well, she's to be married." The queen taps her spoon against the edge of the unbroken cup, taking her sweet time. "I remember telling her something about true love's kiss breaking any curse. Strange, I had thought her about to come back and try to… tame the beast."_

"_You're lying."_

"_Am I?"_

* * *

><p>They fall into a pattern, he and his broken bauble. She continues to waitress at his strip-joint, along with the rest of the fallen witches and fairies, princesses and peasants from another life.<p>

Mr. Gold pays her bills. He is not kind with her, however. He loves to break his things and she is no exception, of course.

He has a key, though she never gave him one. She's asleep on the couch when he comes in, "What are you going to do to me this week?"

He smirks at her, still in her work costume, apparently too tired last night to change or even get to the bed. Good, he prefers her like that.

He worships and desecrates the planes of her body not for the first nor the last time, He always fucks her hard. Despite age and expectations, he's much better at this than Gavin who—though none would believe her now—was her only other partner.

The _man_ takes immense satisfaction from every sound he pulls from her mouth, like an admission of guilt. She feels his mouth form a self-satisfied smirk. "You like that, dearie?" and she shivers against him and his hand and whatever it is that he's doing to her this time.

* * *

><p>Afterward, she's wearing his jacket over her knickers, because it's forever cold in her apartment. There's been no invitation to move in with him, nor will there ever be. "I blame you, you know."<p>

He's gone for a glass of scotch, for he stocks her with food and drink of his own inclination, and he's the only one who actually eats around here. He comes back, with a glass in each hand. He sets one on the table before her—she's never been much for hard alcohol, but she's also never had a taste for death and tragedy, doesn't mean it won't be served her. He's already put his slacks back on, but he's yet to button his shirt. "I know you do, dearie."

"But then I remember, I didn't have much of a chance to start with."

"Girls with suicidal mothers and alcoholic fathers never tend to fare well," his honesty is sharp and cuts, like a knife or a broken teacup.

"Fuck you."

He smirks at that, "Why I'm here, love."

* * *

><p><em>Rumpelstiltskin sends a wedding gift of course. When her father hands her the parcel, her heart flies, only for a moment and then falls silent. She opens it with steady hands, but only from so much practice. <em>

_It's a glass vial, filled with a cloudy liquid (for he'd had more than enough of her hair about the place). The tag attached about the neck like a noose bore only three words: for the forgetting. _

_That night she holds the libation, along with his note, "Drink it in good health. It's not wine." _

_She considers, but then takes the bottle and throws it out the tower window, just like the mother she hardly knew. How can she forget when the memory is all that keeps her going? _

_She left, but she did so to save what they had, rather than accelerate to the ending, to the crash. She saw how it would go months before he sent her out for straw and a test. It hurt too much to keep chasing a love that could only end in heartbreak. He would hurt her; so she hurt them both first. Do the brave (cowardly) thing and the collapse will follow, but not nearly as soon as the alternative._

* * *

><p>He holds up the glass, "To your good health."<p>

She watches him from where she lay on the couch, with smudged lipstick, "Yes, because who would get you off if I wasn't here."

He swallows it with a grimace, but whether from the burn of the liquor or her words, she knew not. "Careful dearie. Remember just who pays your bills."

"You wouldn't let me die."

"Try me." He chuckles, as she downs her own glass. "But perhaps you're right," he says, buttoning up the shirt, "but I might just let you have a taste _hunger_ and _fear_."

"I hate you." She says the words without emotion or malice, simply fact

_Yes, well I hated you too. Every damn day after you left. I cursed you and your wedding bed and prayed to the gods you'd lose beauty, womb, child and hope. I wanted you to come back; I wanted you to die and cry._

"I'm a difficult man to love," he says, and it's no quip. There's no more of those anymore.

Two glasses later, he's still there and she's halfway to tipsy. He knew she was drinking on an empty stomach; she'll have a headache during her shift later today—he'll be sure to remember to make a racket when he comes in tonight.

"I didn't love him, you know."

"O'course not, dear."

"It was just, what I was supposed to do. I didn't even much care when he died. But it was just, like all this pain was too much and that no matter what we do, the world will work against us, so why try? Why not just—"

"Embrace the fall," he finishes for her.

She turns to him and with sad eyes says, "Exactly."

"See you tonight, Belle."

"You know I hate it when you call me that."

"Why I do it, dearie."

She watches him leave, and after he's gone, she thinks upon this man who fucks her and feeds her and always, _always _leaves her. She thinks how she also does not love him and how she always believed that love was layered. Yes, she thinks, love is layered, but so is hate.


End file.
